Expat

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Only in The Philippines

The Christmas season in general and New Years in particular is
a noisy affair in the Philippines, supposedly all the noise is to keep evil
spirits at bay. (Catholic Church eat your heart out) I wrote about it a few years ago after my
first year’s experience here.

The plastic cannon featured back then has been abandoned. It’s
been replaced by black market sales of the piccolo, the judas belt, the pillbox,
the big bawang, the goodbye earth and the goodbye Philippines, all of which
provide a powerful bang for your buck and all of which have been banned by The
Department of Trade and Industry and Department of Health.

Al Jazeera English’s “World welcomes 2013 with wave of fireworks” reported
on the celebrations from Sydney to London, from Thailand to North Korea and
their pyrotechnic exuberance. (Global warming anyone?) The Philippines mention in
the article related to hospital’s being put on high alert to deal with injuries
from home made (illegal) fireworks.

With 413 injuries that required hospitalization and one death in
Metro Manila alone it was what the MSM daily, The Inquirer, described as “typically
rowdy New Year celebrations”.

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The expat

Henry Bateman is an Australian artist and writer living in the Philippines. The Expat, is his blog about the arts (often) and politics (sometimes).
His writing has been published by Crikey.com (Australia), Artslant (US), The Expat Travel & Lifestyle Magazine & The Expat Newspaper (both in the Philippines) and The Western Review (Australia).
He has also had seven solo exhibitions and has had his work shown in 15 group exhibitions as well as 35 theater commissions as a set designer and/or lighting designer.